Big West schedule is big issue for SDSU

San Diego State doesn’t join the Big West Conference in men’s basketball for more than a year. But the first big game is already underway.

At issue is the length of schedule when they leave the Mountain West for the Big West in 2013. When the conference’s basketball coaches met in Irvine earlier this month, SDSU’s Steve Fisher pushed a 14-game schedule for the 10-team league; instead the coaches voted for an 18-game schedule – “pretty overwhelmingly,” according to Big West commissioner Dennis Farrell – in which everyone plays everyone else, home and away.

That recommendation must be approved by the 40-person Big West Council of presidents, administrators and athletic directors that meets in two weeks, then ratified by the conference’s Board of Directors.

Fisher and Athletic Director Jim Sterk declined comment, saying they wanted to respect the process. But last December, when SDSU announced it was moving to the Big West in nearly every sport except football, both spoke of a reduced league schedule in men’s basketball as one of the deal points.

Farrell said at the time that a 14-game schedule was not “written” into the contract with SDSU but amounted to a “verbal understanding.”

The problem for SDSU: It is leaving a league ranked fifth nationally over the past two seasons for one ranked 24th (out of 32), according to Collegerpi.com. That figures to significantly dent its RPI, the computerized ranking system for all 340-odd Division I teams that reputedly influences NCAA Tournament selection and seeding. The fewer games against teams with poor RPIs – and the Big West had five at 250 or worse last season – the better.

A 14-game league schedule also would leave SDSU with 16 or 17 nonconference games to best take advantage of its newfound ability to get games against high-profile schools (Syracuse and UCLA are on next season’s schedule) while not having to play a murderer’s row of opponents with a limited number of available dates.

“It would give us latitude and flexibility,” is how Fisher put it in December.

It also would provide, Fisher said, “wiggle room” to land an at-large berth in the NCAA Tournament should the Aztecs not win the Big West tournament. More than half the nation’s conferences play fewer than 18-game schedules. SDSU played 14 in the Mountain West last season.

“I do know that is a very important issue for San Diego State,” Farrell said. “I’m certainly sensitive to that. And I’m sure when it gets to the administrative level that there will be a lot of sensitivity to that as well.”

The Big West coaches may have expressed sensitivity, too. They just didn’t vote that way.

Their concern: A shorter league schedule forces schools with limited budgets to find more nonconference games instead of taking another bus trip across Southern California, where all but two Big West teams are located. And it would rob two teams per year the chance to play burgeoning national power SDSU at home.

“I see both sides,” said Long Beach State coach Dan Monson, whose 49ers were Big West champions and lost to New Mexico in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. “I understand what (Fisher) is saying, but why are you in a league then? The league is a group of guys who are going to play each other.

“I know this. If SDSU comes into our league and I only get to play them once (in a season), that’s a bad deal. They help our RPI. It’s a marquee game for us.”

The joke among college basketball coaches is that the only thing harder than winning on the road is mastering the delicate art of scheduling. And that doesn’t mean amassing a bunch of Ws against weak opponents.

Last season, Cal State Fullerton won 21 games but had the nation’s 316th-rated strength of schedule. The Titans’ final RPI was No. 157, or three spots below a 12-18 Nebraska team that played the 46th toughest schedule (and fired its coach).

“The key to establishing yourself as an at-large team (for the NCAA Tournament) is building a strong nonconference schedule,” said Doug Elgin, commissioner of the Missouri Valley Conference. “The selection committee won’t penalize you for being in a weak league. Where they will penalize you is if your nonconference strength of schedule is weak.”

Elgin should know. He took the 10-team Missouri Valley from a single-bid league to one that has received as many as four. It didn’t happen overnight, and it took a significant financial commitment from the member schools, but he credits strategic scheduling as an important component.

Elgin wouldn’t divulge details of what he calls “unpublished scheduling guidelines,” but Missouri Valley teams are known to face a $100,000 penalty for playing non-Div. I teams (Big West teams can schedule two per season). The Missouri Valley also actively discourages one-off “guarantee games,” where a big-name opponent pays you to play on its home floor, and encourages neutral court games against top teams instead.

The difference, of course, is that Missouri Valley teams aren’t taking a major RPI hit once they reach league play.

Take Long Beach State. It had the nation’s toughest nonconference schedule last season after playing Pittsburgh, SDSU, Louisville, North Carolina, Kansas and Creighton – all on the road. The 49ers went 18-1 against Big West teams, but their overall strength of schedule dropped to 121st and they got a No. 12 seed in the NCAA Tournament.

“I’m not disregarding Fish’s concerns, because I have the same ones,” Long Beach State’s Monson said. “But I’m probably not as vocal as him because I signed up for a job in the Big West Conference and I play who they tell me to play. He didn’t take a job in the Big West. His concerns are more legitimate than mine.”